The Mystery Behind Flight Deepens

From what I understand, the "reason" we can't explain bird's flight is because the numbers don't add up. Now, I haven't dug deep into seeing what
calculations they used exactly, but I'm fairly certain gravity will be in there somewhere. What scientists are trying to do is verify flight in
pure mathematics. They're taking everything we know is affecting the bird (every force we know will affact the bird during it's flight), and it
doesn't add up.

So the way I see it is there are 2 options:

- Our current understanding (and formulas) for nature (gravity and electricity more specifically) are wrong.
- There are, yet to be discovered, forces at work.

In the article, they themselves mention: "As shown by the problematic performance of the current options, a completely new model may be the
answer."

Our current model allows for extremely counterintuitive and "super-natural" phenomena (quantum mechanics, action at a distance)and exotic matter that
boggles the mind to exist (dark matter to explain the motion of galaxies), yet we mathematically still can't explain how birds fly?

How is not every scientist atleast pondering the idea that somewhere along the line, science strayed from reality (nature). Generations of physisists
and mathematicians sitting at a desk building formula upon formula describing nature, completely detached from nature.

The answer to your question is and was known for centuries by the Aztec.

Have a look at a picture of one of the 'Aztec golden aircraft'...check the wings out, more specifically the designs inscribed on them...they are
vortices..swirls representing the vortices generated by a lifting body, or wing.

I was surprised by the thread.. now Im astounded and going to read as much as I can!

How did this business of proving that a bumblebee can't fly originate? Who started the story?

One set of accounts suggests that the story first surfaced in Germany in the 1930s. One evening at dinner, a prominent aerodynamicist happened to be
talking to a biologist, who asked about the flight of bees. To answer the biologist's query, the engineer did a quick "back-of-the-napkin"
calculation.

To keep things simple, he assumed a rigid, smooth wing, estimated the bee's weight and wing area, and calculated the lift generated by the wing. Not
surprisingly, there was insufficient lift. That was about all he could do at a dinner party. The detailed calculations had to wait. To the biologist,
however, the aerodynamicist's initial failure was sufficient evidence of the superiority of nature to mere engineering.

...

So, no one "proved" that a bumblebee can't fly. What was shown was that a certain simple mathematical model wasn't adequate or appropriate for
describing the flight of a bumblebee.

I'd say, what was shown is that you should never give engineering approximations to laymen. My policy is to always tell brass/managers that we will
look into it and get back to you, because they don't understand what you're telling them anyway, and any chance you give them to misunderstand you,
they will. Similarly, you should never let your customer see the concept validation prototype.

originally posted by: colina
Have you got any reference none of them brought a definitive answer to the question: how does the wing of an aeroplane, or that of a bird for that
matters, generates lift? And so far wings of areoplanes are developed more with experimental trial and error than anything else.

i dont think that is precisely true..

almost all aircraft design begins with CAD, which includes fluid dynamics.. scale models are used to confirm.. not exactly trial and error.

back in the day it may have been trial and error, but we know more or less enough now about fluid dynamics to predict how changing an aerofoil will
affect lift and drag.

The way an airfoil works has been understood for a long time. The simple answer is that the curve of the wing forces air over the top of the wing to
travel faster. This creates a low pressure area above the wing, and a higher pressure area below the wing, that pushes up on it and lifts the
aircraft.

Different shaped wings do different things. The wing of a transport is fatter, to generate more lift, but can't go as fast. The wing of a fighter is
as thin as they can make it, to have less drag, so it can go faster.

back in the day it may have been trial and error, but we know more or less enough now about fluid dynamics to predict how changing an aerofoil will
affect lift and drag.

I've always been impressed by the Wright brothers. Although there's this almost apocryphal vision of them as two good ol' boy bike mechanics sticking
an engine on a kite, they were actually very rigorous in terms of design and design validation, using techniques that we still use today. Their wind
tunnel - which included surprisingly sophisticated equipment for measuring lift and drag - allowed them to test airfoil designs and correct some of
the existing theoretical work relating to flight.

While there was certainly a significant amount of trial and error involved, I think the term really doesn't do justice to what they achieved - or how
they went about achieving it.

Exactly correct. They were up on all the latest aeronautical literature and fluid mechanics, and moreover, experimentally tested some of the theories
and results published, and found that some were not correct.

And finally they had the deep breakthrough idea that the central problem was not just lift and drag---but critically---dynamical stability, i.e.
responses to perturbations. It's obvious now, but hardly so in 1900. Dynamical stability became and remained a core part of aerodynamics to this
day.

The answer to your question is and was known for centuries by the Aztec.

Have a look at a picture of one of the 'Aztec golden aircraft'...check the wings out, more specifically the designs inscribed on them...they are
vortices..swirls representing the vortices generated by a lifting body, or wing.

Sure except that it also looks very much like a few species of catfish found in the same region... and those models where found among piles and piles
of others artistically depicting animals... but you know... dont let that stop you claiming something that is definitely not the most likely scenario
because you want it to be true

That's odd I thought it was well understood, a wing generates lift basically because as it moves through the air, the air flowing over the top surface
of the wing is forced to move faster than the air flowing under the bottom surface, which generates lift. If the angle of attack is altered so is the
lift to drag relationship, that's why nearly all flying things flare upon landing. Some force is required to keep a wing flying through the air in the
first place though, but the more aerodynamic a given wing is the better the glide.
It's more complicated than that in practice but that's the general principal.

That's odd I thought it was well understood, a wing generates lift basically because as it moves through the air, the air flowing over the top surface
of the wing is forced to move faster than the air flowing under the bottom surface, which generates lift.

That's actually a common misconception. I too thought that was the explanation, but turns out both flows of air exit the wing at the same speed. Makes
sense when you think about it though - if the top flow would indeed be faster, the cumulation of the difference of speed would become ludicrous with
passing time.

It's partially correct, and is usually referred to as the popular theory when it comes to explaining lift. The air over the wing is faster than the
air below it, but it's actually down wash off the wing that lifts it (although that's still an over simplification).

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